


The Asylum

by sky_fish



Category: Arashi (Band), Kanjani8 (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Murder, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Suicide Attempt, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:15:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_fish/pseuds/sky_fish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakurai Sho, a young psychologist, starts his new job as a doctor in an asylum in which psychologically disordered criminals are imprisoned. Despite the warning of his supervisor Aiba Masaki, he lets himself get drawn into by one of his cases and by one special person too much but as he realizes it, it's already too late... (AU-Oneshot)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Asylum

**Author's Note:**

> First time to crosspost a fanfiction here(usually I post my fanfictions on my [lj-account](http://sky-fish7.livejournal.com/)), hajimemashite! 
> 
> This story was really hard. It's the first time that I try a genre like this and tbh, halfways I thought of giving up because I totally lost the plot. Thank you very much to my dear betareader airifan for giving some really good input and helping me to finish this. (Please note that both of us are no native English speakers so my English might be off sometimes. I'm sorry.) Hope you like what I created, comments are loved <3
> 
> Written for the Halloween fanfiction event 2013 of [je_trick_or_fic community @ lj](http://je-trick-or-fic.livejournal.com/), thank you very much for organizing this awesome event. Thanks for the opportunity to write this! <3 Please go there and read all the other gorgeous fanfictios as well (if they aren't already posted here ^^)!

**The Asylum**

As Sho entered the asylum behind his supervisor, Aiba, he clenched to his clipboard as if this could save him from what was coming. He wasn’t that sure any longer if this path of job was really fitting for him. He had been working with psychologically disordered people before but this asylum was different from others. It was an asylum and a prison rolled in one which meant that its inhabitants had either committed crimes because they had gone or had ever been insane or that they had gone insane because of the crimes they committed. On the contrary to other criminals in Japan, they didn’t get punished with the death penalty for killing people but they had to stay in this asylum for a long time and even if they got cured one day, some of them had to face the consequences of their crimes after that. 

“I know it’s a bit frightening at first,” Aiba, who was guiding the new guy through the different sectors of the asylum, gave his new colleague a slightly bitter smile, “To be honest, I was really afraid the first time I came here. You don’t know what they will do, how they will react to you. To some of them you just can’t really talk and common sense often does not help. Some of them are violent because they can’t handle all those thoughts and feelings they experience. They either attack you or they attack themselves so to protect the staff and themselves most of them are put into strait jackets during therapeutically meetings. And don't worry, for safety matters they can get chained in leg irons by the staff before you enter a cell, just in case they seem to be dangerous in any way. If you keep some distance then, nothing should happen.” 

“I see,” Sho answered slowly, taking some notes on the slightly wrinkled paper sheet on his clipboard. 

“Are you ready?” Aiba finally asked, his hand resting on the door knob to enter the next room, “We’re entering the sector of the inhabitants’ rooms now, which will fall under your responsibility. Please don’t get frightened too much. Don’t forget – more than prisoners, they are our patients.”

Sho swallowed, nodded and nervously kept following when Aiba opened the door.

The inhabitants’ sector didn’t look like a usual prison. There weren’t just cages made of iron rods, equipped with small hard beds and a urinal for the inhabitants' basic instincts. The cells looked had large massive doors with just tiny windows made from safety glass. Most of them were equipped minimalist with a bed, even if it looked more comfortable than in other prisons, but some had also tables, a few had some books, paper and crayons, even small TV screens seemed to be possible. 

When Sho and Aiba passed the different rooms, Aiba commented on a few of the inhabitants to tell a short version of their backgrounds and conditions. Sho mostly just took short looks at them before he scribbled some notes to the respective names. Just a few seemed to be really interesting cases.

One cell was showing a young man, who was sitting at a table, bent over something. In his bandaged right hand he was holding a pen and his hand was moving on an incredible speed. The table as well as the floor of his room, even the walls were full of paper sheets filled with neat handwriting. Sho gaped at this impressive scene and asked Aiba what was going on with that guy. 

“He used to be a writer. His debut novel was a huge success and sold millions of copies. Maybe you heard about his case, it was a huge topic on the media.”

Sho widened his eyes, “Could this be the famous writer Kato Shigeaki?”

Aiba nodded, “His second and third novel sold quite well too, even if the sales dropped until his fourth work got a really harsh bad critique and turned into a shelf warmer. His next work didn’t get approved by his editor no matter how often he rewrote it and after offering it to other editors who all turned it down as well, in the end he lost control.”

“He set the building which held the office of his editor on fire and two people died within the flames,” Sho finished Aiba’s sentence, “I read his books - they were really impressive- isn’t he continuing writing?”

“Since the incident he’s obsessed with rewriting his fifth novel over and over, at least that is all he’s talking about in the meetings - but look closely what’s written on his sheets.”

Moving closer to the window Sho tried to read the neat handwriting. He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure it out and after a few seconds, he got it. 

“ _I’m sorry,_ ” he stated, exchanging looks with his supervisor.

“That’s right. “ _I’m sorry,_ ” is everything that his hand is able to write now.”

They moved on to the next door. A young man was sitting in this cell and seemed to be hiding from something underneath a purple blanket. From time to time he looked up with a panicked expression on his face, as if there was something on the ceiling of the room. He then moved from one corner of his cell to the other, hiding again with a frightened face.

“Koyama Keiichiro,” Aiba started, “He blew up a cupcake factory with a self-made bomb, no one knows why, yet. The attack took place while the factory was closed for national holiday, so only two men of the security personnel got hurt but one of them is still in coma and of course it caused a huge damage. Since the incident Koyama is suffering from panic attacks and hallucinating about countless cupcakes falling from the sky.”

Somehow Sho had to pull himself together so he didn’t start laughing. He knew that it wasn’t funny at all but the imagination of cupcakes haunting that young man seemed at least a bit amusing. He though wondered what made someone wanting to blow up a cupcake factory. At least the young man seemed not to be such a bad guy or why would he have chosen a day on which the factory was almost empty?

“This guy,” Aiba said and pointed to the name plate besides the next door, which was read _“Yokoyama Yuu”_ , “is completely crazy. Well - most of them are, of course. But he’s really a creepy case.”

Sho looked at Aiba first and then through the small window just to back off as he saw a black haired guy with widened eyes, messy hair and an evil grin jumping against the window and observing him with a crazy look before he seemed to start laughing. He couldn’t hear him though due to the sound isolation of the doors. Sho clenched the fabric of his white coat in front of his heart and took a deep breath to recover from the shock.

“Oh my gosh, he surprised me!” the young man said and looked at Aiba who just coldly examined the behavior of his patient.

“You’ll get used to it,” Aiba explained before he continued his comment about the patient, “He turned insane after he killed the lover of his ex girlfriend – along with her. Really brutal story. Since then it’s impossible to talk to him because he’s completely out of this world, always laughing like crazy, telling that it was the devil himself who told him that he had to kill them. We believe that this is what he told himself to cope with his crime and the loss of his beloved person.”

Biting his lower lip, Sho gave the patient a concerned look who was now sitting in the back corner of his cell, burying his hands within his messy hair, still laughing.

“Matsumoto Jun and Ohno Satoshi,” Aiba came at halt again in front of another cell, letting Sho take a peek at the inside.

There were two young men, sitting next to each other, holding hands. The smaller one was bedding his head onto the others' shoulder while the other gave the smaller one a kiss onto his forehead. When the taller guy lifted his hand, forming a gun with his fingers and imitated to shoot something - or someone - right in front of them, the other cuddled closer, a proud smile decorating his lips. Sho blinked at Aiba questioning.

“You know the story of Bonnie and Clyde, right? The famous criminal couple of bank robbers who even killed people who got in their way? Those two believe that they are the reincarnation of Bonnie and Clyde and they already caused a lot of trouble because of that.”

“Why are they imprisoned together? Is that allowed? All of the others are in single cells,” Sho asked curiously.

“This is a special case,” Aiba answered, “Usually they wouldn’t be allowed to share a cell but both of them showed a highly brutal and violent behavior as soon as we separated them. It’s more a current solution and more for the safety of us doctors and the personnel here to keep them together.”

Sho nodded again and took a look at the strange couple again. He blushed as he saw the taller guy leaning over the other, kissing him passionately before he started to undress him. Aiba just waived his hand as if this was the most common thing in the world and showed Sho to follow him further. There was only one cell left.

“The last inhabitant of this sector is this guy,” Aiba showed Sho to take a look.

Sho spotted a really young man - was he even a man already? He had disheveled, a bit too long dark hair and pale skin and was just sitting on the floor, bent over a little so that his bangs seemed to cover his sight. He was staring apathetically towards a small TV screen which was showing some random movie, showing a happy family eating together at the dining table. 

“What is he watching?” Sho asked his colleague.

“He's watching dorama shows all day long, most of them with “family” as the topic. If he isn't watching something he's getting really nervous and shows signs of paranoia. We're not sure though because he never speaks. This is calming him down a lot somehow so we go with it.”

When the young man seemed to notice that he got observed, he turned his head, lifting it slightly and just stared directly at Sho. His dark eyes, looking up under his messy bangs and eyebrows furrowed in despair, looked like they were filled with the world’s whole sadness. 

Sho moved a little closer to examine the just miserable looking boy, “What happened?”

Aiba sighed, “He experienced some trauma with his family in the past before he became completely insane - at least that's what we are thinking – and then...,” Aiba made a pause, biting on his lower lip.

“What is his crime?” Sho asked without taking his eyes from the young man in the cell, “He looks so… innocent.”

“He killed his parents,” Aiba answered in a low voice.

“No way,” Sho said, his eyes still darted at the inhabitant in front of him, “Look at him - he looks like an angel, I can't believe that he killed someone.” 

Aiba put his hand onto Sho’s shoulder, pulling him back a little to get eye contact.

“Sho! Don’t let yourself get involved too deeply with him emotionally. What do you think why he’s sitting in here? He’s definitely not an angle. Come on, I’ll tell you more about that case later on.”

Sho looked a last time into the eyes of the young inhabitant who seemed to pierce him with his sad look. He couldn’t believe that he was a killer, that innocent face, those innocent eyes were telling him a completely different story. But Aiba was right. He had to watch out that he didn’t let himself get fooled. He knew the deep darkness of mankind, even if more from the books than from practical experience, and it happened more often than thought that someone who looked innocent and nice could turn into the biggest and most evil monster. 

As the young man behind the glass window turned away from Sho to watch TV again, Sho finally turned away as well and followed Aiba who was already waiting for him a few steps away.

\-----

Aiba clashed a patient file onto the table as they were finally sitting in Sho’s office. The doctor’s look was serious and Sho immediately flipped through the file in front of him. The face of the young innocent looking boy from before stared at him from the piece of paper which was showing the man’s personal data.

“Ninomiya Kazunari… double murder… apathetic..., possibly paranoid, self-harming behavior…” Sho read out loud those parts that caught his attention, “abused as a child… suicide attempt?”

“That was after he killed them,” Aiba explained in a cold voice, “He tried to kill himself by slashing his wrist with the same knife he used to slaughter his parents but was found by the police and brought to the hospital before he died.”

“Slaughter…,” Sho repeated his colleagues words, frowning.

“I know, it’s unbelievable. His face really looks as innocent as the one of an angel. It’s reported that he was abused as a child. His father must have raped him a couple of times while his mother beat him up. She most likely felt jealous because her son seemed more attractive to her husband than herself. Well, until he turned 21 and one night took the knife from the kitchen drawer and…”

“Oh my gosh,” Sho covered his mouth as he heard the story of his patient.

“You may think no wonder that he killed them in the end but you don’t have to forget that it’s still a crime, comprehensible or not. Everyone here has motives. Sometimes we know them, sometimes not but it’s a fact that people lost their lives through the hands of our patients so make sure that you don’t feel too much sympathy for them. It’s not our primary task to take care of them or to understand them, it’s our task to make them aware of what they did so that they can reflect and bear the consequences in an appropriate way.”

Sho closed the file again, sure that he would check the details later on.

“He’s a real brainteaser and drove two of your predecessors almost crazy. No one knows what he is really thinking. Even if he’s not spacing out or watching his stuff, he doesn't talk at all. And his face is so charming that people tend to fall for him - just hopelessly of course. He’s a murderer after all.”

Sho frowned and crossed his arms as he examined his supervisor, “Wasn’t you the one who told me that more than prisoners, those people are still our patients?”

A bitter smile flashed over Aiba’s face, “It’s just a warning, Sho. Don’t get too involved in particular cases. That’s dangerous, I know what I’m talking about.”

\-----

The first time Sho had to treat Ninomiya Kazunari, Sho had asked the staff to chain the patient in leg irons. He didn’t know his patient yet, so it was just to be on the safe side.

 _“As part of the therapy and because experiments showed that in this way it's much easier to get close to them, we call some of the patients by a nick name,”_ Aiba had explained Sho before the meeting, so that's the name, Sho would go with to address his patient.

As soon as Sho opened the door, he could hear a soft low humming which seemed to come from his patient and mixed with the talking and background music from the dorama the young man was currently watching. As a first action, the doctor got closer to Nino, down onto his knees – still keeping some safety distance - and introduced him.

“Hello, I'm Sho. Nice to meet you, Nino, how are you today?” the young doctor said but didn't get any reaction of the young man at all. 

Sho noticed that Nino was just focusing on his TV dorama. He took a deep breath and stood up again, taking place on a seat at the other side of the cell to examine the young man for a while. Finally, Sho decided to move his seat a bit closer to his patient until he was sitting only a few feet away from Nino, watching the TV screen as well.

“What are you watching?” he asked his patient, giving him some time to answer but of course he got ignored again. Only the silent humming of Nino could be heard and so Sho continued talking on his own, “I heard you like shows with family topics... what do you think, would you recommend this one to me?”

Again, Sho got ignored completely and just joined Nino watching the dorama in silence for a few minutes. As a pretty moving scene took place, the doctor noticed that Nino wasn't just staring at the screen with an apathetic look but that there were tears starting to run down his cheeks as well. So he really was following the dorama, Sho concluded. 

“Why are you crying?” Sho asked Nino, moving even closer, obviously not afraid at all, since he still got ignored.

Sho wasn't surprised that he didn't get an answer again but then, his patient finally showed some reaction towards the new doctor, as Nino felt Sho carefully touching his cheek to wipe away his tears. Sho backed off a little in surprise, focusing onto Nino's eyes who stared at him now, still shedding tears. He had stopped humming along with the background music of the running dorama but still did not say a word.

“Don't worry... you can tell me. I'm here to understand you. I want to help you,” Sho whispered and his lips formed a warm smile.

Nino just stared at him a bit longer but Sho didn't manage to get out only one single word of the young man during their first meeting.

\-----

Nino was sitting in his cell, his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the scene of a dorama with an apathetic look on his face like always, humming along with his a bit husky sounding voice. Sho soon had found out that Nino wasn't one of those dangerous patients who might attack their doctor so since their third meeting he didn't let Nino get chained any longer when he entered his cell.

Almost two weeks had passed since Sho started this job and he couldn’t deny that the case of the parent murder Ninomiya Kazunari interested him the most among his patients. He wasn’t sure if it was only the angelic face of the young man and the sadness in his eyes that drew him in so much and wanted him to help the young man or if it was because he could really understand his patient's feelings up to some point. It wasn't like his other patients didn’t mean a lot to him, though. He cared about all of them. 

Nevertheless, Sho had studied Nino's file to an extent at which he knew all the detail listed there by heard. He had read the report about how Nino was found on the day of the murder multiple times, had read the report about the state the young man had been in then as well as the state in which his murdered parents had been. He even saw photos from the crime scene and the victims. Aiba wasn’t exaggerating as he called the murder of those people a “slaughter”. There had been blood everywhere, the wounds of the victims looked horrible and it seemed to be clear that Nino, in whichever state he and his mind might have been during that day, didn’t only want to kill those people but he let them suffer a lot as well. The most obscure thing about the murder scene was the arrangement of the corpses and Nino himself. After killing them, the young man had placed them onto their usual chairs around the dining table and he himself had sat down on his usual chair as well, dangling his arm with the slitted wrist, prepared to die. It’s almost a miracle that the police and the ambulance were there so quickly after one of the neighbors must have gotten frightened as she heard the death screams of the Ninomiyas. It really didn’t look like Nino wanted to get saved but in the end he did and now he was alive.

Another photo had shown Nino’s right arm, covered with countless slits guiding from the crook of his arm to his wrist. There had not only been the fresh, deep bloodied cut from his suicide attempt but also a countless number of older and younger wounds, some already turned into irremovable scars. When he saw that, Sho had felt sorry for the young man, who seemed to have suffered from self-harming behavior already since at least a few years until he wasn’t able to cope with it any longer and went berserk… 

Witness statements from the neighborhood had told, that Nino had always been a nice and friendly young man but always silent and without friend and that he really seemed to be unhappy. His parents didn’t allow him much so everything he did was going from home to school and later university, and returning back home right after. The people in the neighborhood were not sure about what exactly was going on behind the walls of the Ninomiyas but it was clear that their family life wasn’t working out well at all. The father seemed to get angry a lot, at least people could hear his angry shouting and smashing of dishes or other things through the house almost daily. There was the suspicion that the father was violent towards his wife and that both of them beat their son on a regular basis. As the police found the dead bodies as well as the almost dead Nino in the night of the incident, his physical condition was horrible. His skinny body was covered with bruises and scars, and they were not all resulting from his self-harming behavior. In the hospital the doctors had made some tests and found out that he must have been raped by his father that night and so the suspicion arose that it had not been the first time. 

Seeing Nino watching at the TV-screen, Sho tried to get rid of all those sad feelings that came up his throat as he remembered those horrible details from his patient’s file. It was just like Aiba said… if everything the police and the doctors from the hospital as well as the neighbors had told was true, he could understand, why the young man killed his parents, even if he didn’t say that this had been the right way to solve things.

Sho came a bit closer to Nino and finally sat down next to him. He looked at Nino who didn’t show any reaction to Sho’s presence again. Their relationship as a doctor and patient hadn’t improved so far. Sho had not managed to get close to his patient yet and like Aiba already warned him, Sho might have to accept, that it might take a lot of more time to get close to the young man. No one of his former doctors hat managed to get Nino to talk so far. Not even Aiba. 

Maybe just spending time with him, talking, wasn’t enough, Sho thought. If talking didn’t approach his patient, maybe other methods should be tried. So far, didn’t Nino react only the one time when Sho had wiped away his silent tears? 

Following a spontaneous idea, Sho suddenly reached out for Nino’s right arm, getting it out of the hug of Nino’s knees. As he pulled his arm closer, Nino immediately stopped humming and stiffed at the touch of the doctor, giving him a frightened stare. Sho looked into Nino’s eyes, trying to give him the feeling that he did not have to be frightened about the physical contact. He took Nino’s hand in his own, holding it for a few seconds. Nino’s body eased again and his look became less frightened after a while. He lowered his eyes onto the sight of Sho’s hand holding his and his fingers even twitched a little bit as if he wanted to reply to Sho’s gesture but wasn’t brave enough to do so. Finally, Sho rolled up the long sleeve of Nino’s shirt and started examining the young man’s wounded arm closer. 

There weren’t any fresh wounds fortunately. Like Aiba told, Nino’s nervousness as well as his self-harming behavior had decreased radically since he was allowed to watch DVDs in his cell. Of course in his cell there weren’t any things that he could use for trying to hurt or to kill himself but in the beginning Nino had still harmed himself a lot with using his fingernails to scratch his wrists and his neck, until they started to clip his nails really short almost every day. Aiba also had told Sho about a scene were Nino had broken one of his DVDs and had tried to use it to cut his wrist which didn’t really work out well and then ended in a disastrous crying attack of the young man holding the only slightly bloody plastic pieces in his trembling hands. After that Nino had just drowned himself in watching doramas all day and night until he fall asleep – usually in front of the TV screen.

Sho brushed his fingertips over the countless scars on Nino’s arm until he felt Nino starting to tremble. The young man seemed to get more nervous from the situation, his look got frightened again and the speed of his breath started to increase. Sho stopped his doing, rolled Nino’s sleeve back over the wounds and again entangled his hand with Nino’s, pressing it tightly. He lifted one of his hands to cup Nino’s face and to make him look into his direction. 

“I’m glad you’re not harming yourself any longer,” Sho gave Nino a soft, warm smile, “That’s really great! You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

Suddenly Nino’s eyes filled with tears and Sho suddenly gave into his urge to comfort the young man in front of him and so he pulled his patient into a hug, his arms around his back and buried in his hair as he pressed his face close. First Nino seemed to start panicking and to freak out. He was close to hyperventilation now and desperately tried to push Sho away with his trembling arms as well as to wring his head out of the embrace but Sho didn’t let him escape.

“Don’t Nino, don’t! I won’t harm you, I swear! I won’t do anything bad to you so stop being afraid!” Sho said into Nino’s ear, tightening his hug to show him that he was sincere. 

After a few seconds Nino’s breathing finally slowed down and his body relaxed again. He let his arms fall down and still shedding tears, Nino just let the hug happen. Sho pressed him even closer, feeling the skinny, fragile body helpless in his arms. He caressed his hair and whispered some comforting words into Nino’s ear about being there for him, about that Nino didn’t have to be afraid any longer. 

In the end Sho and Nino were sitting in front of the TV screen, close next to each other and holding hands. Aiba, who finally came in to remind Sho of an upcoming meeting with another patient, shot a serious look at Sho, showing his colleague, that he seemed not to approve his behavior. Sho ignored him for the time being.

\-----

After smashing the door to Sho’s office, Aiba smashed his hands onto the doctor’s desk, leaning towards him with a serious look on his face.

“What’s with that holding his hand and everything, Sho?!” he was clearly angry about his coworker as he started scolding him, “We’re doctors and not supposed to provide that much body contact or whatever to our patients, you know that! What is that, some kind of special treatment?! You’re walking on really thin ice, my friend.”

Sho rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, standing up to face Aiba face to face.

“If you want to know it, it is indeed some kind of special treatment! You might have noticed that Nino is not talking at all and that he is – or if we are lucky we can put that in past tense – was afraid of any physical contact with other people . I’m sure he’s still drowned too deep within his trauma and we have to try our best to get through to him. If talking isn’t enough, as so many doctors before had proved, I want to try if another method of approaching him will help. He already got a little bit more opened, don’t you think so too?”

“That’s dangerous, Sho, really dangerous… I’m sure you’re putting too much effort into this case. Be careful… he’s a killer. If you get too close to him you might end up dead as well sooner or later” Aiba said in a warning voice, turned around and finally left the room with another smashing of the door.

\-----

Never mind Aiba's harsh critique, Sho was pretty sure that he was doing the right thing. At least, since that day, Nino really seemed to open up a bit more towards him. Suddenly, the young man seemed even interested in getting in contact with his doctor. He still most of the time ignored him as he fell back into his usual apathetic state but sometimes his eyes seemed to lighten up a bit when Sho was talking to him. First when Sho tried to touch him again, Nino still showed a frightened reaction but he soon remembered, that Sho wasn’t doing any harm to him and so he quickly got used to the regular body contact, might it be only a slightly touching of his shoulder, letting the doctor brush away strands of his hair from his eyes or letting him hold his hand for a while. 

When Sho was talking to him, Nino sometimes stopped humming, which indicated that he was listening to what the doctor was saying. Sho was quite optimistic that this would be a clear sign of Nino paying more attention towards his surroundings, which would be a big improve of his condition already. Still Nino didn’t talk but Sho was sure, sooner or later he would.

There were a lot of therapy methods and experiments, Sho wanted to try, not only to get close to his patient but also to see if he could already try curing him or at least bringing him a step closer. One day, Sho again tried a questioning technique to get the other to talk. He sat there, next to him in his cell and accompanied his patient while Nino watched some dorama. 

“Is this your favorite dorama?” Sho asked, “You watch this one pretty often, don’t you?”

Even after a few minutes, Nino didn’t show any reaction but hummed along the theme song, so Sho continued asking.

“Are there any good memories about you and your family?” Sho asked and leaned back a little, resting his head against the cell’s wall. 

When the other suddenly fell silent, he turned his head to Nino in surprise. Sho leaned forward again, trying to catch Nino’s look but he still just stared at the other side of the room at the TV screen. 

“There must be, right?” the doctor continued, paying close attention towards his patient's reactions, “I’m sure they went to see the zoo or the circus or anything other funny together with you, when you were little, right?”

Nino’s expression darkened even more and his eyes started to wander around nervously. 

“They did not only yell at you... and beat you,” the doctor slowly spoke, knowing that he was rubbing salt into his patient's wound, mentioning his past.

Sho knew that his plan might fail and possibly would end in a disaster, but he felt like this was the chance to risk something, “They did not only abuse you and force you to do things you never wanted to do, right?”

The young man next to him seemed to become even smaller than he already was as he sank into his position even more, slowly moving his hands up to his head as if he wanted to hide from something.

“Come on, Nino, it’s time to wake up again. Your parents - they aren’t here any longer. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to hide any longer within your imagination of the perfect family. Just open your eyes to the truth!” Sho said in a strong voice before he leaned a little closer to Nino to whisper the next words into his ear, “They are dead... and you’re the one who killed them…” 

Suddenly, Nino started shaking his head. First slightly, then faster and faster, his facial expression gradually turning more desperate, his eyes filling with more and more tears. Sho suddenly felt that he would maybe really manage to coax Nino out of his shell, even if that would mean that the young man would suffer again because of his painful memories. This was important. This was part of the treatment, even if it hurt.

“You have to keep on living, Nino. Do you want to stay in your current state for the rest of your life? Is this for what you got rid of them? Is this why you took that knife and punished them for what they did to you?”

A desperate sob left Nino's lips but without showing any mercy, Sho continued his speech.

“They didn’t give you the right to lead a normal live. It was like they killed you again and again every day, wasn’t it?!” the doctor’s voice got sharper and louder again until he was almost yelling but aware of the fact that those cells in this asylum didn’t let go out only one sound, he didn’t mind.

Nino still shook his head like crazy, he covered his ears with his trembling hands and started to scream, most likely only to drown Sho’s words which made him feel so uncomfortable right now. But Sho didn’t care about that at the moment. He knew, that he had to drive the other to the edge to get what he wanted. He already knew that just asking and talking nicely wasn’t the right way to get through to Nino. Sho crawled in front of his patient, looking at him with a serious face. He reached out his hands and put them onto Nino’s shoulders, trying to hold his trembling body steady. Nino just started screaming louder, refusing to look at his doctor and causing Sho only to raise his voice even more as well.

“Didn’t you want your life back to be able to feel free and to experience a normal life? Their doing was wrong, it wasn’t your fault that it ended like that. Parents are not supposed to treat their own children like that! Just because they set you into this world, they don't have the right to use you as they please! That’s why you killed them, right? Say it Nino, say it!”

“Yes,” and Nino finally spoke.

“That – is – it -,” he blurt out in a shaky voice, his words cut off from his sobbing, “That's why... all of them to-told me... to k-kill Mom and Dad.”

Sho fell silent. He frowned and loosened the grip around Nino' s shoulders. He realized that he was getting much closer to Nino and the mystery behind his behavior, as he thought he would and that Nino had in fact spilled out some information no-one knew about before. But before he could dig deeper, there was still something left that he wanted to tell Nino by all means.

“Listen, Nino. What happened is really sad but it was the only right thing to do for you back then, right? Don’t run away, Nino. Face it. Get rid of the shadows of your past and keep on living. It’s your body. It’s your life. It’s your right to live!”

Nino's body stopped trembling and turned limp instead. His hands fell down onto the ground.

“I should have died as well…” he said almost voicelessly. A few tears still ran down his cheeks, “I should die...”

“No, I won’t let you die, “ Sho immediately answered, shaking his head and crawling closer to Nino, grabbing his hands, “Not yet. Believe me, there is a world out there, your life out there that you are supposed to live. You made a mistake and it can’t be undone. It was cruel and it wasn’t right, I know that you're feeling guilty but you have to live with it. Should it have been for nothing? All your suffering? Everything? I don’t think so. I think you have deserved your chance. And I’ll help you, if you let me help you.”

Nino just stared at Sho miserably, not talking anymore. As Sho gave up waiting for an answer, he wanted to try finding out something else about the young man's condition.

“Hey Nino,” he began and wiped away some tears from Nino's cheek, “What did you mean earlier - who told you to kill your parents?”

Nino's eyes darkened again and his expression went completely emotionless. The young man slowly turned away his head, watching at the TV screen again which already showed the next episode of the dorama they were watching before. Silently and his voice still a bit shaky he started to hum again and again he had shut out Sho of his world.

\-----

The next day as the doctors working at the asylum met up for a talk about exchanging news, Sho introduced a new thesis about the case of Ninomiya Kazunari. Until this point it had not been clear what exactly was going on withing the young man. It was most likely that he already had some kind of psychological disorder since his childhood because of the horrible experiences and violence he had to suffer from because of his parents, that was what most doctors agreed. Nevertheless Nino had never shown obvious symptoms of any specific disorder and usually was just in an apathetic state and with this totally not to reach, so that most doctors had given up on finding out more about him. Now that Sho managed to get a bit closer to his patient, he thought that he might come closer to the truth behind all that as well.

“In my opinion, Ninomiya Kazunari does not only suffer from escapism and self-harming behavior, he also shows symptoms of a form of schizophrenic disorder,” Sho began while handing out sheets of paper where he had written some notes about his thesis, “He’s a hard case to get close to but as soon as you get him out of his state of escapism, everything makes sense and the symptoms seem clearer.”

“It’s known that the patient shows some symptoms that possibly are those from a schizophrenic disorder, like his poverty of speech, but it’s only a possibility, it could be something completely else as well,” another doctor chipped in with his doubt but Sho was prepared well enough to take this argument to his own advantage.

“I’m aware of that fact,” he admitted, giving his colleague a point, “Only his poverty of speech seen alone with his escapism of course doesn’t suffice for this thesis. It could also be a reaction to shock or something else. But there is more! He mentioned something that makes me think that he did commit the murders because someone else _told_ him to,” Sho pointed out, “ _This is why all of them told me to kill Mom and Dad_ ”, he read out Nino's quote from his notes.

The other doctors seemed to wonder and started to whisper to each other. It was the first time that Nino had talked to one of the doctors so this was indeed a new fact to consider.

“There was someone else?” Aiba asked, frowning, “Did someone put the idea of the murders into his head? Someone he knew? Or are you referring to his imagination?”

Sho nodded, “I’m not completely sure yet about who he's referring to but since we know, that he had almost none social contact to other people in the last months before the murders, I think it’s not a real person but more likely it’s some kind of “voice” or “voices” he heard. I’m pretty sure that he is experiencing acoustic hallucinations – another symptom of schizophrenia. His addiction to watch doramas, which distracts him and his humming, by the way, I assume to be some kind of countermeasure to those acoustic hallucinations. I believe that with this he wants to mute them.”

Aiba and the other doctors nodded slowly, admitting this as a possibility. Sho was glad that he seemed to get heard properly and that this way he might get the chance to dig deeper into Nino’s case.

“I’m willing to examine this case even closer considering those new facts, but I also recommend switching the medication of the patient,” he ended his speech.

\-----

The next meeting with Nino took place in Sho’s office. The doctors believed that a changing of the patient’s surroundings was sometimes helpful to get a new view of their behavior and condition. It had turned out as a pretty hard task for the nursery staff, who had to drop Nino at Sho’s office, since the young man seemed not to be willing to leave his cell, as often reported. Now, the young man was just sitting in the chair in front of Sho’s desk, obviously nervous, his whole body trembling slightly. His eyes wandered around nervously, even if it seemed like he was trying to focus on something in front of him. As usual, he was humming some song and from time to time, his hands covered his ears and he bent over, just like he was trying to hide from something. 

When Sho started asking the usual questions, like how Nino was feeling today, if he slept well and so on, Nino as often ignored the doctor and didn’t answer. Therefore he just continuing his strange behavior which – like the doctor had to admit – made the psychologist in front of him getting nervous a little bit as well. 

As Sho noticed what Nino was looking at, his tea mug which was painted with a red and yellow circle pattern, he reached out his hand and took the mug, slowly guiding it towards his lips for taking a sip. During the whole action he kept his eyes on Nino who tried concentrating on the mug, following it with his eyes. 

“Are you thirsty, Nino?” the doctor asked. 

After a few seconds, Nino quickly shook his head.

“So you like my tea mug? It has nice colors, right?” Sho asked. 

He moved the mug a little to the left, then a little to the right, Nino was still following it. Then Sho let the mug disappear as he put it under the table and out of sight of his patient. Nino then suddenly lifted his face with a desperate expression and his eyes focused now onto Sho’s. His humming, which had become almost unheard during the last minutes, finally stopped completely.

“Do you want to have it?” Sho asked.

This time, Nino nodded, his eyes still focused on Sho.

“Come and get it,” the doctor requested Nino.

It took some time and Nino seemed to hesitate first. Then his eyes wandered away from Sho and the tea mug to the right, his look anxiously. Sho turned his head, trying to find out what Nino was looking at. It was the corner of his office on the left side behind him but he couldn't see anything that could be worth Nino's attention. Wondering the doctor looked at Nino again. He breathed in and out slowly, trying to not get infected by Nino's nervousness, which turned out to be pretty hard. The anxiety in his patient's eyes increased and then he quickly stood up, went two steps closer to the doctor’s desk until he was standing right at the edge and then reached out his trembling hand to Sho. 

“You can have it but you have to ask for it, if you want it, Nino,” the doctor explained, obviously trying to get him to talk again.

“…Please…,” Nino said after a few seconds in a low voice.

“Please, what?” Sho asked further.

“Give it to me…”

The doctor let this count as a success for that day and so he did as he promised. He reached his tea mug out to Nino who then took it in both hands and let his eyes fall onto the object he was holding. There was still a little bit tea left. Nino looked up again, giving Sho a questioning look from his anxious eyes.

“You can drink the rest. It tastes good! And then you can keep the mug. It’s a present,” Sho encouraged the young man and pointed at the mug.

Nino just stared at it. His eyes looked dark. Then suddenly, he lifted his hands, which were still trembling, over his head and smashed the mug down onto the floor. It immediately split into pieces and the young man quickly sank down to the ground, his hands desperately reaching out to the wet ceramic pieces. Sho quickly woke from his perplexity and as he understood what was going on, he immediately came running around his desk and quickly lowered down to the ground where Nino already tried to cut his right wrist with a sharp looking piece of the broken mug.

“What are you doing?! Stop that!” Sho yelled at his patient and quickly pulled away Nino’s left hand.

On the ceramic there were already a few drops of blood. Nino’s wrist showed a small, not really deep scratch which Sho quickly covered with a handkerchief he had fiddled out of his pocket and now pressed against the wound. The two men struggled a bit as Nino tried to repeat his action but his fragile and weak body of course couldn’t stand the strength of Sho and so he had no choice then to let himself get pulled up onto his feet again. The doctor pushed him back down onto his chair, then he finally pulled the ceramic piece out of Nino’s shaking hand, causing the other to whimper, and threw it away.

“Nino, No!” Sho yelled at him again, the young man's wrists in a firm grip.

The other finally stopped struggling but his face seemed miserable. Nino didn’t focus onto Sho but seemed to look at something else – again - his eyes widened in fear. As Sho realized that, he turned around but again he could not find out what Nino was staring at. After a few seconds, Nino ducked his head and tried to pull his knees up close to his body. Sho eased his grip around Nino’s wrists and looked at him forming his body to a picture of misery, pulling his knees close to his chest and burying his face, still trembling and finally starting to cry.

“Nino… what are you afraid of?” Sho wondered nervously and tried to calm him down.

Nino didn’t look up but he slightly lifted one of his shaking hands, pointing to the corner behind Sho’s desk. Sho again looked at the corner but there was nothing. Not even an object, a spider or a bug, just nothing at all.

“What is there, Nino?” the doctor asked further, cupping his patient’s face to force him to look at him. His nervousness increased and a shiver rolled down his spine.

Nino refused to open his squinted eyes which were still shedding small tears. His trembling got worse as Sho repeated his question.

“Those people,” Nino whimpered desperately and his voice cracked, “They are always around. Why can't you see them?”

Sho froze and turned around a further time to look at the place, Nino had pointed at. There was no one. Nothing. Of course not. Right? He knew that!

Nino lifted his hands and put them around Sho’s wrists to hold onto. He let out a heartrending sob. Feeling Nino’s cold, trembling hands, Sho instinctively moved a bit closer and finally pulled the other into a protective hug. Nino slowly put his hands around Sho’s body, pressing his fingers into the fabric of Sho’s white coat. 

“Who, Nino? Who is there?” hugging the other tightly, Sho asked, trying to hide the feeling of fear which was slowly but surely overcoming him.

“The dead ones...,” was everything Nino could whisper into the doctor’s ear in a shaking voice while he pressed himself closer into the others' hug.

\-----

“You mean, he’s not only experiencing acoustic hallucinations but he’s also “seeing dead people”?!” Aiba asked laughing as he and Sho met for lunch the next day.

“Yes – well – I think he is hallucinating,” Sho answered as they put their dinner trays onto a free table in the small canteen of the asylum which was used by the doctors and other staff.

“Let me repeat…” Aiba frowned, pressing his fingertips against his forehead, “You claimed that Nino might listen to imaginary voices in his head… which drove him crazy, so that he ended up killing his parents, right?” the doctor repeated Sho’s thesis from the last meeting, “And now you think that he might see dead people?”

Sho nodded, “I know that sounds weird . What I mean is that I think he does not only have acoustic hallucinations but in addition visual hallucinations. Or he only has visual hallucinations, that might be possible as well... however, I guess those “dead people” must be some kind of manifested feelings in form of people and because they don't appear as “real” to him, he might classify them as “dead”. ”

Aiba seemed to think about something before he finally spit it out, “What’s that humbug about dead people and everything anyways? Yoko is the same, talking about the fucking devil every day. Just because they can’t cope with their feelings of guilt, they start to imagine dead people and the devil or whoever who give them strange orders,” Aiba sighed again and put the meat from his chopsticks back into his bowl, as he seemed to have lost his appetite, “Maru was the same as well…”

“Maru?” Sho asked curiously, taking a sip of his glass of water. 

Aiba just waived his hand a little, murmuring something about a former patient. Sho didn’t ask further since Aiba looked like he didn’t want to talk about the details. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt your discussion,” suddenly a voice behind them said, “But I just happened to hear what you were talking about,” a young fellow doctor finally put down his own lunch and sat down at the front side of the table.

He let his eyes wander from Sho’s surprised face to Aiba’s annoyed expression. The latter seemed not really happy about the appearance of their colleague and rolled his eyes while letting out a sigh, murmuring something like “Oh no, not you again…”

“Don’t look like that again, Aiba, I know you don’t believe in my thesis but hell, science neither proved it nor the contrary so it’s still in the realm of possibility!” the young doctor insisted, darting a serious look at his colleague. 

Sho still looked surprised and wasn’t sure what was going on here. He didn’t know who this doctor was, maybe he saw him from afar already one or two times but it seemed like he was working in a completely different sector of the asylum and they didn’t have much contact so far.

“May I introduce,” Aiba began, looking at Sho as he pointed to the other doctor, “This is Ohkura Tadayoshi. He’s crazy himself, I you ask me and I still wonder how he manages to stay a doctor instead of becoming a patient already,” he again rolled his eyes, “Ohkura, this is Sakurai Sho. He’s working in my sector since a few weeks and currently trying to solve the Ninomiya-case.”

“Yo!” Ohkura greeted Sho, holding up his hand before he finally started to eat.

“Nice to meet you,” Sho answered, even if he wasn’t that sure about that.

“Listen,” Ohkura continued while eating, causing Sho to slide off a little just in case the other would spill something out of his stuffed mouth onto him. 

“About your thesis?” Sho asked and earned a nod.

“I’m thinking about the thesis that maybe such patients like you mentioned, don’t only IMAGINE dead people and stuff. I think it’s possible, that they really can SEE those, well, let’s just call them “ghosts”,” the young doctor next to him explained.

Sho frowned and Aiba sighed deeply again, starting to peck at his food. Seemed like he already knew about Ohkura’s thesis better then he wanted to.

“Which would require that “ghosts” really do exist in this world, right?” Sho chipped in, voicing his doubt.

“Of course!” Ohkura replied, “Well, it’s nothing that got scientifically proven so far so it’s understandable if some people believe in the existence of ghosts and some do not, but I say, why not considering it as possible? In this case, people with, what we call “psychological disorders”, might not be as crazy as most of us think. Maybe they just entered another state of cognition. What if those people are in a state of mind, due to which they are really able to see ghosts?”

“Creepy...” Sho cringed only at the thought. Somehow he didn't really like that idea.

“If you keep clinging to this stupid thesis, the head of the asylum will throw you out sooner or later!” Aiba suddenly hissed towards Ohkura, “Please stop talking such crap!”

Ohkura shot an offended look at Aiba and pointed his chopsticks at him, “Watch out, Aiba. Just because WE can’t see them, it doesn’t mean, that they don’t exist. You can’t prove it, right? So if you please let me have my own theses?”

“Really, you’re a pain in my neck,” Aiba replied sighing, “Go and annoy someone else, please.”

Huffy, Ohkura ate the last bit of his lunch and then stood up, taking his dinner tray with him. He angrily turned his back to Aiba and then flashed a friendly smile at Sho.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Sakurai, maybe you’re not as ignorant as other people at this table,” Ohkura rolled his eyes, nodding slightly into Aiba's direction, “and maybe you can consider my thoughts. It’s up to you of course but maybe a different point of view helps you to understand your patients even better. See ya!” and with that, Ohkura was off again.

Sho just gaped at the scene and watched the young doctor walking away, until Aiba called him back to their own conversation.

“You know the saying that there is a fine line between genius and madness? Guess on which side of the line he is. Seriously, can’t he leave us alone with his crazy talking? He’s so annoying, really!” Aiba grumped, still poking his food.

Sho didn’t tell Aiba, because it was obvious how his colleague was thinking about that topic, but deep inside he wondered, if maybe - only maybe - Ohkura’s thesis wouldn’t be such a bad one, even if Sho’s blood ran cold only for the imagination of to accept the existence of something like ghosts. 

“Why is he still working here with such a thesis”, Sho asked more to himself than to Aiba and shook his head as if he wanted to get rid of his former thought, “I mean he’s right, nothing is proven about the existence or non-existence of “ghosts” but he’s a scientist. Scientists don’t believe in ghosts, do we?” 

“You know, his thesis might be nonsense – I really think it is – but he developed a way to deal with hallucinating patients that really showed some positive effects. He gives the patients the feeling of that he believes them, or he really believes them, I would not put that past him, and then he tries to approach the “ghosts” those people believe to see. He talks to them through the patient and they try to solve their problems with those ghosts and sometimes it’s like they just… go away,” Aiba explained.

“So he's some kind of a fake ghost whisperer?” Sho concluded and earned Aiba's nod.

“I would say that the patients can easier deal with and get rid of their hallucinations this way. So maybe his method isn’t bad, but I definitely do not believe that those ghosts are real and I don't approve that he is maybe believing in them. Those are manifestations of feelings and fears from deep inside the patient, that’s all.”

After that, Aiba quickly returned to talk about Nino and praised Sho about his progress. At least Sho was the first doctor, who got that patient to talk. Everyone had already given up on him, thinking that he would just keep on staying in his persistent vegetative state, imprisoned in his cell in this asylum as well as in his head, until he died one day. But Sho had been persistent and even if no one knew yet where this would lead to, each little step forward and every little change in Nino’s condition was a success.

“How come you’re praising me now? I thought you don’t like that I picked up this case,” Sho asked his colleague after he finished the last bit of his lunch.

“Well, it’s not that I don’t approve that you put in a lot of effort in solving a patient’s case. That’s a good thing, of course, and your success speaks in your favor as a psychologist. I just worry that you'll get lost in this case sooner or later because I think that you’re very sensitive, especially if it’s about Nino. I just want you to take care and to not get involved in disadvantageous situations. You know I already warned you. And I still mean what I said,” Aiba explained.

Sho looked at him and as Aiba did not seem to plan avoiding Sho’s eyes, the doctor just nodded before he got up to bring back his empty dinner tray. 

\------

It was already pretty late at night and Sho was still sitting in his office, racking his brain over Nino's case. He had gone through the file again and again, this time trying to find some hints of visual hallucinations reported somewhere – something that could conclude onto that what Nino was calling “dead people”. It was hard to get what happened before the murders, Nino committed. The police found the young man back then already unconscious from the loss of blood he had suffered and since he had woken up in the hospital, Nino had just been a nervous wrack, that seemed not able to say a single word. That nervousness hinted on Nino seeing - or better – imagining things, people, whatever.

After he got imprisoned, the doctors soon found out that Nino calmed down when he had something to distract himself with, like listening to music or watching doramas. Still he hadn't spoken at all but the nervous behavior had become less. If Nino really was seeing “ghosts”, Sho assumed, he must be able to ignore them more or less with distracting himself from them. Well, that was what he had come up with until now. Nothing really new.

Sho let out a frustrated noise and put down his reading glasses to rub the inner corners of his eyes. He leaned back into his seat, letting his eyes stare at the ceiling which showed some shadows, created from his desk light. His thoughts didn't leave Nino and what he had read about him for multiple times already. 

Nino's past – if what the files reported was true – really touched Sho. Getting abused by ones parents was tough. Not only that, it was the toughest thing ever. Getting beat up by strangers on the street, getting bullied by classmates, something like that was tough but not being able to trust your own parents was the worst. Sho sighed deeply. He knew what Nino must have felt. At least he could understand it a bit. He never could trust his father either, who had slapped his wife and his son until Sho had moved out with his mother when he was 16 to live with his grandparents. Maybe this – and the fact that his father died a few years ago - was what saved him from becoming insane and killing his father one day – just like Nino did in the end.

“And people like that call themselves parents,” Sho snorted before he leaned onto the table again, just to bed his head onto his crossed arms to rest for a little bit before continuing to work.

~~~

Sho was sitting at the desk in his room in his parents' house. He was wearing his school uniform from high school. His bed was made, like his mother always made it and on his desk there were magazines about psychology and medicine. The small TV screen on the shelf at the opposite site of the room showed some dorama but although Sho had turned up the volume, he couldn't understand what the characters were talking about. All he could hear were the pain filled screams of his mother from downstairs. His heart cringed, like it always did at times like this and staring at the door of his room he wondered what to do. Nervously he was clenching his fists and biting his lower lip until it started to bleed. He couldn't feel any pain but the metallic taste of his own blood was disgusting and so Sho wiped his lip with a disgusted expression on his face.

“Why don't you go downstairs?” a familiar voice behind him said and as Sho turned around his head in surprise, there was Nino, messing up the blanket as he slouched on Sho's bed. 

Nino's eyes were dark and empty, his face was sprinkled with dark red spatters and his hands were covered in blood. With an increasing heartbeat, Sho just stared at him, not able to move. When Nino stood up and slowly came closer to Sho, he pressed himself into the back of his chair, trying to get away from the scary picture of the young man. This wasn't the Nino that he knew, this wasn't his patient with the angelic face that didn't seem able to harm a fly. 

Sho's breath became heavy, drowned the indefinable voices coming from his TV and mixed with the screams of his mother in a strange way until his head was filled with some kind of echo. His vision got blurred but Sho could recognize Nino lifting his arm and tilting his head. As his eyes focused again, Nino's lips formed a small smile, which seemed to be so damned out of place right now. It was only now that Sho realized, that in his hand Nino was holding a bloodstained kitchen knife.

“Won't you borrow it for a while? It's not that hard as you might imagine. Don't worry, I won't tell anybody,” Nino whispered in Sho's ear, as he out of the blue was right next to him.

Shaking, Sho turned his head and stared into Nino's eyes which were completely filled with black. When Nino blinked, the pupils of his eyes – in the form of those of a reptile - shined red for a second. Sho screamed at that sight and tried to escape the false smile which would never really be Nino's.

~~~

Shortly after, Sho was standing in the living room downstairs, his father in front of him, his mother cowering in front of her husband on the floor, covering her face with her arms. When Sho's father turned around to his son, a more than evil look was there on his face and his physical appearance was more the one of a demon than of a human being. He humped his back, his hair seemed longer than usual and disheveled, his eyes dark and the hands of the man showed long claws which seemed to have hurt Sho's mother. 

Finally, Sho saw red. Not really thinking about anything he lifted his hand in which he was suddenly holding Nino's knife and stormed to his father, attacking him with a scream of anger. He could hear blood splattering onto the living room's floor, the furniture, the walls and could hear his father screaming, even if his voice sounded like a scream from hell, but everything that Sho could see was simply the shadow of himself slaughtering the person that harmed him and his mother countless times.

~~~

The doctor woke up from the bursting sound of his desk lamp's bulb, catching a last second of light before his office went completely dark. He gasped out of the shock and froze as he imagined some kind of presence behind his back. 

_“Do you miss me?”_

Sho turned around panicking, carelessly spreading some of his papers onto the ground, as he thought that he heard the voice of his father whispering into his ear but of course he couldn't see anything. Even if the light wasn't out, he wouldn't see anything because there couldn't be anyone and least off all his father. His father was dead since years. 

Nevertheless Sho almost freaked out and felt the urge of immediately leaving this place. Guided only by an almost unseen streetlight from the other side of the street shining into his office, he jumped up, stumbled around his desk, grabbed his coat which was hanging on the coat rack next to the door and stormed out of his office.

After finding the switch with shaky fingers right next to him he turned on the light of the corridor and without looking back hurried outside of the building to the parking lot. He jumped into his car and drove right home at a much too high speed, not paying much attention onto the fortunately almost empty streets, slightly sweating from his nervousness and shooting irritated looks into the driving mirror from time to time.

When Sho arrived at his apartment and almost dropped the keys as he tried to unlock the door, he cursed. Inside he hurried into the living room, switched on the TV and slammed down onto the couch to let himself get washed over buy some random late night dorama. Rubbing his forehead he finally started laughing at himself.

“You're such an idiot, Sho,” he said to himself, “Getting scared by a nightmare, what are you, a child?”

But his inner self couldn't think about a satisfying answer and so Sho just stared at the TV screen, finding the comedy dorama not funny at all.

He didn't really sleep much that night and he didn't the following nights either.

\-----

Sho wouldn’t tell anyone of his colleagues, especially not Aiba but it didn’t last long until he started to really question his own sanity. It was for weeks now that he didn’t sleep properly. He often stayed over at the asylum, thinking over the cases he had to take care of, ending up thinking about Nino’s case quite too much every time, which almost naturally brought him to think about his own past as well. 

Sympathizing with a patient wasn’t bad but in this case, maybe Sho knew just too good how Nino felt, what Nino experienced, even if his own case had not been as brutal as Nino’s. He hadn’t told anyone about his past, neither his friends, nor his colleagues. His mother and grandparents were the only ones knowing about it. Maybe the neighbors from back then knew it as well but no one said something about that only once. Sho didn’t want to think about his past. He had tried to forget all of it or at least to suppress it. Sometimes, if you can’t deal with a problem, trying to mute it was the best way to forget it. And that was what Sho had done all these years. While his mother found a new job and a new love soon in their new environment, for Sho it wasn’t that easy to cope with the situation. So he had drowned himself in studying, first to graduate from school, then to get his doctor's degree as a psychologist. But lately, memories had started to come back.

It all started with that weird dream he had in which even Nino appeared – a frightening version of Nino, not to be compared to the one he knew – as well as a horrible vision of his own father, slapping his mother as he did so often. Sho couldn’t forget that dream, nor could he forget what had happened after waking up from it. First he thought it was just his imagination, transfigured by his overworked mind but the longer he thought about it and the more strange things took place, the more he thought that he might either start to fall insane himself or that he might gain the ability to see them as well – dead people. Shadows at night, things reflecting in a mirror that couldn’t be there, voices whispering in his ears… most of the time thinking that it was one and the same every time – his dead father.

Why should he haunt him? Sho wondered one night as he was spending the night in his office again. His father did never try to get in contact again with him or his mother after they moved out, expect from the one time, he had shown up at Sho’s grandfather’s place to congratulate him for getting accepted into university. Sho had told his father to disappear and to never show up again and at the latest as his father had seen his ex-wife coming home, accompanied by another man, he had angrily left. 

The next thing Sho could remember about his father was that he and his mother were attending that man’s funeral. His mother dressed completely in black, her long hair falling over her back and her face expressionless, not even shedding one single tear. Sho had worn his old school uniform since he didn’t have any other dark formal clothes and didn’t cry as well. Even if his father had died and even if Sho usually was a man who felt a lot of sympathy for the destinies of other people, he didn’t really feel sorry for his father. To be honest, he didn’t feel one bit sad about his father’s death and he was just relieved and glad that he and his mother couldn’t get hurt by this man any longer. 

Maybe his father was angry, that his son didn’t cry at the funeral and that he didn’t feel sad for his father leaving this world. Maybe he didn’t want to go into the light, as it was called by Ohkura, to get his soul reborn one day and to start a new life with a new chance. Maybe since then he had stuck around his son to wait for a chance to get revenge and to give him a guilty conscious. And now Sho was involved so deep with Nino, who clearly seemed close to the world of the dead, that he maybe had already gotten pulled in too much so that the Nino's ability of sensing ghosts had spread to Sho as well. Maybe his feeling of sympathy was to blame for that. Maybe he was just too sensitive for all of this.

It didn’t help, that Aiba often scolded him and even tried to pull off Nino’s case from Sho. It was Sho’s luck that he could record the first helping results in the Ninomiya case so that the rest of the doctors didn’t see why Aiba should take over the case again, since he had failed the first time he was in charge of him. Accusing Aiba of jealously, some doctors started to ignore it when Aiba tried to explain that Sho was putting too much emotions into this case and started to get insane. No one believed Aiba – expect from Sho himself. 

The half-dark corridors at night almost freaked him out, as Sho stepped out of his office to get some coffee from a vending machine. Sho’s thoughts were still at his last meeting with Nino that he had finished just a few hours back. He had tried to put Nino under pressure to find out more about the ghosts that Nino was seeing, even if it was not only for his patient’s sake, as he had to admit. Sho asked questions like, if Nino knew those people. If those were dead relatives of him. Maybe Nino got haunted by his dead parents as well. But Nino had just gotten frightened to hell and had started to scream and to hide in a corner of his cell to shut out the things he didn’t want to see. Sho knew that his behavior might have been too pushy but for Nino’s sake, as well as for his own sake, he tried again and again.

\-----

Another incident happened, when Sho held a meeting with two of his patients – the famous duo Oh-chan and Matsujun – the pair that believed to be the reincarnation of Bonnie and Clyde. This case was definitely not easy either. Maybe it was even more hopeless than Nino's case. It wasn't the case that those two didn't talk but when they talked, it was neither made up stuff from their imagination or they just sat there, wrapped in their straight jackets, facing each other just to vow their immortal love to each other that would overcome death again and again.

At first, Sho – like every other doctor as well – thought that those two were just completely insane, even more than others maybe, since they seemed to share the completely same level of insanity, but after that incident, Sho wasn't that sure about that any longer.

As always, Sho had ordered the staff to put “Bonnie and Clyde” into straight jackets and to chain their feet to the wall so that they couldn't attack him. Usually, if they were together, nothing should happen but since therapy could be pretty tough and provocative sometimes, it was just for safety measures. Sho was still making some first notes, without paying too much attention to the weird couple which sat there, facing each other just too look into the eyes of the other with a loving expression. 

Then, when Sho had taken place on his usual chair, looking at them, he finally saw it. 

First, he squinted his eyes because he thought that there was something wrong with his sight. Then he rubbed them. When he looked closer, he finally backed off in fear, stumbling backwards, bringing his chair to fall down along with his notepad. Crawling backwards, pressing his back against the cell's wall, he couldn't help but stare at his two patients who finally looked at him with questioning looks. Frightened, Sho raised his hand and pointed at them, his eyes widened and his face pale like the wall. He couldn't voice what he was seeing that moment since he just couldn't believe his own eyes. 

Well, that must be the problem – his eyes. He was sure that he was just too tired lately so that he was starting to see daydreams because of the lack of sleep, right? What else could those two human like shadows be, which were floating around Oh-chan and Jun?

After breathing in and out a few times, closing his eyes and facing his patients again after a few minutes, Sho had managed to calm down. And of course, there weren't any strange shadows floating around them. What did he just see? He must be really tired, he thought, put up his chair again and sat down to start the meeting. Not to mention that he couldn't really concentrate this time, he soon broke up and planned to continue the meeting another day.

\-----

“You look tired these days, Sho. You're alright?” Aiba asked a few days later at lunch when Sho spaced out over his cup of Ramen.

“Eh?” he asked, dropping his spoon and creating a mess on the cafeteria table.

“Come on, that's really uncommon for you,” his colleague scolded him and wiped away the soup with a napkin, “Didn't you get enough sleep? I bet you're studying Nino's case until late at night, trying to find a solution to help him.”

As Sho didn't answer, Aiba looked up to him and sighed.

“That's it, isn't it? Look, that's what I meant when I said you shouldn't get involved in a case too deep emotionally. It will bug you more and more and if you can't cure him, you will never forgive yourself. Don't take it too much to heart, Sho.”

Still Sho didn't say anything. He knew that Aiba was right, but he couldn't help. That case just had caught him too much already. It was too late now to turn back, that was for sure. And more than that, Nino's case itself wasn't the only thing bugging Sho. 

“Sho? Are you still in there?” Aiba asked as Sho turned his head a little, spacing out again or – no, this time he wasn’t really spacing out. The frown on his forehead told, that he was quite concentrated. Slowly Sho was tilting his head as if he wanted to turn around to look at something but mid-way he froze instead, not being able to move any longer. The terrified look on the doctors face irritated Aiba.

“What’s going on, Sho? Are you alright?” his colleague asked further but didn’t get an answer for the next seconds. Just as he wanted to repeat his question, Sho’s eyes finally met his. The young doctor gulped and opened his slightly shaking lips.

“Sho?” Aiba asked again, leaning a bit forward to see if he could help in any way.

“Is there...,” Sho finally began in a low, slightly cracking voice, “Is there someone behind me?” 

Aiba frowned as he stared at Sho, then he let his eyes wander around over the area behind Sho’s back. The cafeteria wasn’t really full at this time, since the two doctors were quite late with their lunch break today so the seats behind Sho were almost empty.

“No,” Aiba answered and looked at Sho again, “Unless you mean the staff, cleaning up the table in the back corner there.”

Looking at Sho who seemed to get desperate from that statement and whose shoulders started shaking so that he was forced to lay down his spoon in order not to spill even more of his Ramen, showed him that Sho didn’t mean the staff. Definitely not.

“Sho, what’s going on?” Aiba asked in a harsh voice, “You wanna tell me something?”

“No,” Sho answered and took a deep breath, trying to focus on his lunch again. If Aiba said that there was nothing, there should be nothing, right? At least nothing “real”, even if he thought to feel something behind him that was giving him the creeps, “It’s nothing, Aiba. It’s nothing…”

Examining his colleague with a critical look and looking at the back of the cafeteria again, just to find, that there indeed was no one to see, Aiba finally got back to his Ramen as well.

“Maybe you need some rest, Sho.”

Maybe, Aiba was right.

\-----

The next time, Sho visited Nino in his cell to held a meeting, his stomach dropped and he wished to run away in an instant. Of course he didn’t because this was his job and there was Nino who he didn't want to leave alone but what he was seeing was just too much to handle right now. 

Nino was sitting on the floor, as usual, watching some dorama and focusing especially on the music he was humming along. But this time – or maybe all the other times before as well – he wasn’t alone. Sho let himself sink down the wall since his knees weren’t able to hold him up any longer. He tried to calm down as he breathed in and out slowly for a multiple times. He lifted his hand and brushed it over his face.

“You’re just lacking sleep. You’re imagining stuff. There’s nothing. They aren’t real,” he murmured to himself, shutting his eyes for a moment but when he opened them again, they were still there.

Dark shadows, not clearly to be seen but definitely forming human shapes were standing and sitting next to Nino who just seemed to ignore them with all his might. Two of them whispered something into the young man’s ear, which Sho couldn’t hear, but enforcing his stare Nino just didn’t react. 

“Nino!”

As Sho called out to his patient, not only he but also the shadows turned to him. While Nino’s eyes shined as he saw his doctor, showing some relieve that he wasn’t alone any longer, Sho couldn’t help but stare at the one human formed shadow next to Nino that had turned its head towards the doctor slowly and even if he couldn’t see the details clearly, it looked like the form of a woman with long, straight hair. There were two dark wholes which Sho assumed to be her eyes that just stared at his. Sho shivered and his breath hitched but then he pulled himself together and glaring at the female ghost as he stood up and went towards Nino. 

His heart skipped a beat as the ghost shadow vanished into thin air along with the others as soon as he arrived the young man. Sho took a look around but there weren’t any shadows any longer. No whisper could be heard. Finally they seemed to have disappeared. At least for now. Breathing a sign of relieve, Sho knelled down to his patient who looked at him with his large, sad eyes. He hugged Nino.

“They are away now, aren’t they?” Sho whispered into Nino’s ear who just nodded slightly shortly after, “Don't... don't you want to tell me something about the people you are seeing, Nino?” 

He was getting scared. The topic “ghosts” was really bugging him since that strange dream of himself, Nino and his father, in which Sho did what Nino had done. In which Sho did, what he back then had wanted to do and maybe would have done if he and his mother didn't leave that house on time. As Sho had woken up from his nightmare, he had heard a voice behind him, still not sure if it was still a remaining from his dream or if it had been there for real. Well, if this would have been the only incident, he might think that he just imagined but such strange thinks had kept on to happen until he reached a point at which he was really starting to doubt his own sanity. 

“You can't see them,” Nino finally answered, “So why do you want to talk about them? There's nothing you can do...”

Sho closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “What if I could see them as well?” he asked in a low voice, almost unheard.

Nino lifted his face, his sad brown eyes wondering looking through his as always disheveled strands of black hair. He stared at Sho for a few seconds and then pulled him closer. Nino was trembling slightly and not sure if it was to comfort his patient or himself, Sho enforced the hug around Nino's back.

“Are you afraid as well?” Nino whispered in Sho's ear, “I know how you feel, they are scary, aren't they? I wished they would just disappear...”

“Oh my gosh… and you have to see them so often,” Sho let out a desperate laughter and his heart clenched. He let his hand wander up to the back of Nino's head, burying in the young man's black hair to press him closer for comfort, “No wonder that you are scared that much.”

“If Sho is with me, I’m not that scared though,” Nino admitted in a low voice that Sho hardly heard, burying his face even more at Sho’s shoulder.

And that was everything, Sho could get out of Nino about that topic. 

“Don't worry,” Sho tried to encourage his patient, “I'll protect you with all my might.”

\-----

The next few days, things kept being tough for Sho as his nightmares became worse and the feeling of a ghost – maybe his father’s – breathing down his neck became stronger and stronger, even if he couldn’t clearly see anything, not even in the mirror, which sometimes only showed a slight shadow of which Sho wasn’t sure about if it was really there or just a play of light and shadow in the bathroom. One thing got clear – Sho was going to freak out sooner or later and he definitely had to do something against that. Of course he didn’t want to get put into the asylum himself, but he wasn’t able to deal with the situation all alone any longer, so he decided to ask Ohkura for advice, hoping that he wouldn’t call him insane on the spot.

Taking a deep breath and trying to collect his thoughts about what he was going to do and what he was going to say, Sho stood there in front of Ohkura’s office and truly hesitated a little before he knocked at the other doctor’s door.

“Come in!” Ohkura replied from the inside and Sho opened the door.

As he entered the office, clearing his throat and closing the door silently, Ohkura only slightly lifted his head to see who entered and then turned back to his work to finish it quickly. His desk was a complete mess, filled with piles of paper, books and a lot of strange stuff Sho didn’t know what it was. The shelves didn’t look much different. To the contrary to Sho’s psychologically lecture which was lined up neatly in his own office, Ohkura’s collection didn’t seem to be arranged in proper order at all and in between all those psychology books there could be found even books about the supernatural like some dealing with ghost appearances, exorcism and more.

“What brought you along today?” Ohkura asked as he put his stuff aside, stood up and offered Sho to sit down onto the chair in front of his desk which he quickly freed from some books.

Sho first hesitated and wasn’t sure how to tell Ohkura but finally he spit it out.

“You might know that I’m dealing with the Ninomiya-case recently, right?” he started and Ohkura nodded, “To be honest, lately I’m considering your thesis more and more.”

Ohkura folded his hands and was all ears, “Tell me what exactly you mean.”

“To put it straight – I think, Nino is really seeing ghosts,” Sho stated. Another nod of Ohkura followed.

“I’m glad you don’t call me crazy for what I’m thinking. But now you’re making me really curious. What is making you think that way? It’s definitely unusual that people believe me and my thesis. What happened?” the young doctor asked with a smile, adjusting his seat and waiting curiously for an answer to his question.

It took Sho quite a while until he was able to tell what had happened, “You believe in the existence of ghosts, don’t you?” he looked at Ohkura with big, questioning eyes.

A few seconds later, Ohkura nodded slightly, “Not officially, because you know how others may think about that and I don't want to lose my job but yes, I believe in the existence of ghosts.”

Sho sighed in relieve. In this case, he could tell him. And so he did. Ohkura just sat there, crooked over his desk, capturing every single word that Sho was telling him about his experiences within the last weeks. He told him about his nightmares, about the strange stuff that happened around him, about the strange things he was seeing lately and about his suspicion that all of that meant he could see ghosts as well. 

Even if he tried to not tell everything to not make him sound completely insane, as expected, voicing out loud his thoughts just sounded strange but Ohkura didn’t laugh, didn’t get an angry expression like Aiba would have gotten and he didn’t call Sho insane either. He just listened to him, asking for more detailed descriptions from time to time, his eyes large and curious, like a child, who was listening to the most interesting stories ever.

\-----

“I have to talk to you!” Aiba snapped at Sho with an unbelieving expression as soon as the door to Sho's office fell shut.

“I assumed as you dragged me here with your bad mood. What is it, Aiba?” Sho answered, glaring at his colleague.

“I can't believe it!” the other blurted out and slammed his hands onto Sho’s desk. 

The other doctor had already settled down on his chair, organizing some of his papers which were spread over there but as he heard Aiba’s words, he froze. He put a last paper aside and then looked at Aiba, feeling caught.

“What are you talking about?” Sho asked after he had cleared his throat and leaned backwards into his seat. He crossed his arms.

“Don’t play dump, Sho, you know what I mean! You're claiming to see ghosts lately. Are you kidding? Honestly, you cannot be serious! Explain!”

Sho sighed again, “I knew you would react this way,” he murmured, ruffling his hand through his hair.

“I want and explanation from you. You can’t really be seeing ghosts, can you?” now it was Aiba’s turn to cross his arms. 

He stared at Sho with waiting eyes but Sho just shortly let their eyes meet, looking away quickly after that, letting his eyes drop to his desk as if the coffee stain next to his paper knife would be much more interesting than the conversation right now. Aiba gaped as he thought to have figured out the meaning of Sho’s behavior. He started to shake his head in disbelieve, searching for words.

“Sho! Don’t tell me that you –“ the doctor was at a loss at words again, “You really think you are seeing ghosts?!”

“I don’t!” Sho shot back quickly, trying to defend himself but he knew that he sucked at lying and that Aiba already had caught him completely.

“Don’t mess with me, Sho,” Aiba answered, letting out a desperate laughter as he tried to process the information he got, “You think that you are seeing ghosts. I bet this is all the influence of Nino. Just because you got too close to him, too involved in his case. Did that guy infect you with his sickness? Really Sho, you must KNOW that this is bullshit! Ghosts? Don’t joke with me. Those are hallucinations. Simply hallucinations and nothing more!”

Sho bit his lower lip. He knew how crazy all of that sounded. And he knew that Aiba wouldn’t believe him, whatever he told him. Of course, Aiba would think that he had gone insane. Well, maybe he really had gone - Sho wasn’t that sure about that.

“I should report this to the higher ups and pull you off your job!” Aiba yelled at his colleague and ruffled his hair, “Do you think a doctor who’s thinking that he can see ghosts is professional?”

“Aiba - don't. Please, don't,” Sho whispered.

“I warned you about Nino and his case. How many times did I warn you? I knew you’re too sensitive for that. You like him a lot, don’t you? If you ask me, you like him too much. You're not doing yourself a favor liking a patient too much. Do you think he will ever answer your feelings? He's sick. And lonely. Even IF it might happen that he answers your feelings, do you think, they would be real? Or just out of his loneliness?”

Sho gaped at Aiba for a second without being able to say anything. His heart clenched. Aiba right now just said out loud what Sho already feared deep inside his heart. 

“I know that... I'm not expecting him to answer my feelings. I won't even TELL him, that I like him, so what’s your problem about that?”

Aiba smote his forehead at his colleague's words and let out a frustrated noise.

“Fuck, Sho,” he started to argue again, “Don't you get it, he’s insane. He’s driving you crazy and making you sick as he is, like you have already proven. More than that, he’s a fucking killer! And I know them… if they killed once, they will do it again, it’s like a black panther who tasted blood, you know?”

Sho got mad again as he heard Aiba indirectly calling Nino a bloody-minded killer, “It wasn't “him” who actually killed them, it were those ghosts around him, that drove him to that action. He acted under their order!” the doctor stood up for his patient.

“Well, great, so he's someone of those who listens to the evil voices deep in their mind or – even better – the voices of “ghost’s”, of course that's another case,” Sho didn't know that Aiba could be that sarcastic but it was clear were this would lead to.

“The point is, when he is cured -,” Sho went on defending, his hands gesticulating.

“THAT’S the point, WHEN he is cured,” Aiba interrupted him immediately, pointing at him, “You never know when someone like that is really cured. It's not a cold where you can tell that it's cured as soon as your nose isn't running any longer. It's something that can only barely get caught by us doctors. And one beautiful Sunday you meet again, maybe he’s staying over and in the middle of the night he walks into the kitchen, takes a knife and you will never wake up again!”

Sho stood there, crossing his arms and tried to breath in and out calmly to not immediately jump at his colleague to punch his face.

“What makes you think such horrible things about him?” he finally asked Aiba, “About all of our patients, I guess? Do you think they are killing machines or what?”

Aiba sighed and finally he spilled out what he really seemed to be thinking already for the whole time, “Sho, there is a purpose why Japan is still punishing murders with the death penalty.”

Sho stared at him in disbelieve. For a short while he wasn't sure how he should response to Aiba's statement but in the end he cleared his throat and voiced his concerns, knowing that this quite serious topic could lead to an even more severe fight between him and his colleague.

“But if they are sick - ,” Sho started, “When they are mentally incompetent and you know his backgrounds, can you really hold him liable for what he - “

“You can’t say, oh he’s sick, he killed someone but doesn’t matter!,” Aiba said in a sarcastic tone, “It’s a fact that he killed someone and this is never right, no circumstance can lighten that, if you ask me.”

“I don’t say that killing is ethically allowed if you suffer from a psychological illness, but you have to admit that this has to get considered for the punishment. And more than that, just because he did it once in such a state, it does NOT mean that he will do it again if he's cured! You sound like you want the death penalty for all of them, do you think that's right, Aiba?!”

Aiba let out some kind of a desperate laughter, “This is not a discussion about the right or wrong of killing in whatever state you are or the death penalty... It’s not like I say all of our patients who killed someone should better drop dead and it’s not like I don’t wish for their cure… but I don’t want you to get involved too deep with someone who might fall back into his sickness and kill you, even after he's cured!”

“Who says that he would kill me? Who says that he will fall back into his sickness?” Sho hysterically asked.

“I say, because I experienced it on my own!” Aiba shouted, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. He hurriedly pulled off his necktie and ripped open his dress shirt to expose his neck to Sho, “Can you see that? Can you see that?!” 

Of course, Sho could see the large scar guiding down from Aiba’s neck to the front of his chest. Shocked, Sho held his breath and stared at his colleague with a pale face.

“Once I was as naive as you are…,” Aiba started in a low voice. His hand which was holding his necktie, was trembling slightly, “Somehow I got too attached to one of my patients. He got cured, or let me say he tricked me and made me believe that he was cured. After 2 years, we accidentally met again and stayed in contact. And you know what? One day, he attacked me with a fucking knife and tried to slash my throat, just like he did with his other victims of the murder cases he got caught for. Fortunately I could escape, only hurt, and what's left is this scar. I didn't tell the police or anyone, but after that he killed another person and then himself.”

Sho gulped. Of course he wasn’t able to just continue arguing after what he had heard. How could he? Aiba’s eyes and his gesture showed clearly, how much the man was in pain, remembering that. His experience must have been horrible and Sho could understand now, why Aiba had lost his trust into his patients. But would that really happen to him as well? Between him and Nino? He couldn't imagine that Nino would ever try to kill him and he wanted to believe that one day he could cure Nino for the rest of his life. 

“Aiba,” Sho finally found his speech again, “I’m really sorry for you about what happened. I can totally understand your feelings but please, don’t you think it’s my own risk to take? I want to believe that he would never harm me… I want to trust him.”

Aiba let out a frustrated sigh and quickly dressed again to hide his scar. He then took a further step towards his colleague.

“You are so damned naive, Sho, you can't handle this as a matter of fact. You’re too unprofessional. You didn’t really fit this job from the beginning!” Aiba continued his harangue

“What exactly is your problem, Aiba?! I AM taking my job seriously, I want to help my patients and yeah, especially Nino! What’s wrong about that?” Sho barked back at Aiba.

Aiba laughed, “And you think if you’re going crazy yourself, this would help? I'm sorry, but you sound like a disillusioned idiot. Just because you experienced something similar as he did in your past, you sympathize too much. You don’t know your limitations, You –“

“Wait!” Sho stared at Aiba shocked, suddenly. There was something off.

“What?!” Aiba ranted.

Sho thought about their argument for a second, thought about their past arguments and discussions, thought about what, how much and how detailed he had told Aiba. Yes, there was definitely something off.

“What do you know about my background?” Sho finally asked his colleague, standing up and getting around the table to face him better, “I never told you anything about my past. I told nobody about that.”

And then, suddenly Aiba's eyes turned completely black, the same way as Nino's did in Sho's nightmares. Sho gasped. What was that right now?

“Didn't you tell me by yourself? About your dad?” Aiba said in a calm voice, his eyes black as the dark night. He slowly took a step closer to Sho, who backed off as pure anxiety built within him.

“No,” he pressed out, his eyes darted on the black wholes in Aiba's face, “I didn't. I definitely didn't!”

“You sure?” Aiba came even closer.

Sho let his eyes quickly fall onto his desk, searching for something he could use to defend himself just in case. His eyes spotted the paper knife next to that huge coffee stain he had stared at just a few minutes before and without hesitation he reached out his hand and snapped for it to hold it with both hands in front of his body, darted towards his colleague – or whatever that was.

“Who are you?” Sho asked in a shaky voice, his hands slightly trembling. 

“Come on, Sho,” the creature in front of him tilted his head, his lips forming an evil grin that just didn't fit in, “You know who I am.”

“You're definitely not my colleague Aiba!” Sho yelled, his voice getting a hysteric tone, and lifted his hands, fidgeting around with the paper knife, “What are you, a demon? A ghost? You must be, right? How else could you know about my secrets? You spied on me and pretended to be a human being the whole time, didn't you?!”

The creature that was supposed to be Aiba lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture, obviously trying to calm the other down.

“Sho, you take that paper knife now and put it back onto the table,” Aiba's voice said but Sho's eyes, which had gotten a bit teary from staring at the other blurred his sight. 

As he blinked, his sight came back but instead of Aiba – with normal eyes – as he had hoped to spot, it had gotten worse. There seemed to lay a dark shadow over Aiba's appearance, more than that, Sho thought that this dark shadow WAS Aiba. He panicked, even if that creature tried to calm him down with nice words but it just looked so damned off with that evil grin, the dark eyes and that shadow. Sho's breath sped up from the nervousness and unease he was feeling. His throat felt constricted and cold sweat started running down his temples.

“I don't know who you are, or what you did to Aiba, or if you ARE Aiba, but I warn you – stay away from me,” Sho pressed out between short breaths, his whole body shaking.

“Sho, please! Calm down, it's me!”

“LIAR!”

Sho was sure that this was not his colleague and suddenly the scales fell from his eyes. He stared at the dark creature which was still trying to approach him with Aiba's voice and something similar to Aiba's face but Sho didn't let himself get tricked. That ghosts which haunted Nino must be trying to drive him insane as well, trying to get him off Nino's case so that no-one would be able to help the young man any longer. All of this must be a complot against him and Nino, that was for sure. Those ghosts didn't want to let Nino go, they wanted to keep him in this world between life and death, wanted to draw him into their world sooner or later, gathering around him, freaking him out, scaring him. But Sho wouldn't let this happen. He would protect Nino and safe him from his miserable destiny, that was for sure. 

“I will NOT give him to you! Never!” Sho cried out with an angry voice and finally felt his strength coming back.

The shaking of his voice as well as the trembling of his hands stopped and his eyes focused on the creature in front of him. If he attacked it, it should disappear, right? If they could frighten him and Nino, he would just frighten them as well until they all disappeared forever. 

Letting out an angry yell, Sho pulled back his hands and dashed a few steps forward wanting to push his paper knife through the ghost appearance to make it disappear. What he didn't expect was, that the creature indeed did not disappear. Not at all. And it didn't feel like hitting the air like the last time in Nino's cell when Sho had the feeling of simply going through the shadows of the ghosts without feeling any physical contact. Therefore it felt, like he had stabbed human flesh right now. The paper knife had caused a dull noise as it pierced the white clothes and got stuck in the body in front of Sho, which fell against his as weakened knees couldn't hold it up straight any longer. A muffled chuckle came out of the creature's throat, still sounding like Aiba and clenching its hands around Sho's upper arms, it spilled some red liquid which dropped down its chin onto Sho's white coat, dirtying it.

As Sho came to mind, the dark shadow as well as the black in Aiba's eyes were gone. Indeed, it was Aiba, clenching at him, trying to say something through the gurgling sound which the spilling blood caused in his throat. Panicking, Sho immediately let go the handle of the paper knife and stepped back, not really minding Aiba, who immediately collapsed to the ground.

Sho's body started trembling again as he saw the collapsed figure of his colleague down to his feet, more and more blood spilling onto the ground from the others' wound as well as from his mouth, creating a pool of blood which grew bigger and bigger the longer Sho stared at it. Reaching his hand out to Sho, Aiba tried seeking for help but his hand wasn't strong enough any longer and dropped to the floor quickly. 

Suddenly, images from Sho's mind started to overlap with the picture in front of him. His sight seemed to flutter, his vision darkened. The image of a man lying in a coffin, reaching out his hand to Sho, staring at him with dark, empty eyes made his heart clench.

 _“Why, Sho?”_ a voice – Sho wasn't sure if it was coming as an echo from his office's walls or if it was just in his head, whispered, _“Why do you have to kill?”_

Ruffling his hair and squinting his eyes, trying to get rid of the voice as well as the still overlapping pictures of his dying colleague and a nightmare's image of his dead father, crawling out of his coffin, Sho started to scream. He then widened his eyes, stared at his hands which were stained from blood and his breath hitched. Nino's sad face, his sad eyes looking at him from behind his dark, a little too long strands of hair appeared in front of him. The young man reached out his hands, showing Sho his own bloodstained hands. A small smile formed on Nino's lips before Sho's vision flickered again and he suddenly heard the sound of the deafening wailing of sirens. The blue flickering light almost blinded him as Sho stumbled towards his office's door which he pushed open to escape from all of this.

\-----

After taking only one step, Sho suddenly found himself in his parent's living room again. The demon like creature that once had been his father, a man to look up to as a little boy but now an evil human being, hurting his own family members, stood there, showed his back to Sho, bent over a whimpering woman who was lying on the floor. In Sho's hand he could feel the cold grip of the kitchen knife he was holding. He blinked a few times. Was he dreaming again?

His look wandered from the knife in his hands to the dark creature in front of him. As his father lifted his fist and let it dash down at Sho's mother who yelled in pain, Sho enforced the grip around the knife. His 16-year old self took a few steps forward, calling out for his dad. The evil like creature turned his head and spotted his son. With black filled eyes, red pupils lighting up, he stood up and faced Sho completely. Blood was dripping from the huge claws which his hands had become and just like in his dreams, Sho finally reached the end of his tether.

The young boy – not even a man – rushed forward, holding the knife with both of his hands in front of his body. Screaming, Sho stabbed the creature in front of him. Not once, not twice, three times, just to make sure that this evil man couldn't do any harm to his mother or Sho any longer. Trying to catch his breath, Sho watched his father crashing down to the floor, reaching his hand out to his son, pleading for help. Sho ignored it and settled his eyes onto his hands which were covered in blood. 

The ambulance with the blue flickering light and the siren's wailing approached the house and emergency stuff came running into the living room.

Sho came closer, completely ignored by his former self as well as the emergency stuff, the shadows of the past. The creature which was getting laid onto the stretcher of course wasn't some evil looking demon. It was just his father. The man still seemed breathing at that time but Sho knew that it couldn't last long until he would take his last breath. At least this all had happened already years ago. 

Sho buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes...

\-----

“I killed my father,” Sho's breaking voice murmured, as he opened his eyes again. 

In front of him there was Nino, his hair disheveled as always, his eyes looking sad as always. But they weren't just sad. They weren't scared either. They were sad and filled with care and sympathy and Sho's heart clenched at that sight, it caused him to let out a small sob as he felt the hot tears running down his cheeks.

“I killed my father...” Sho said voicelessly.

Nino tried to provide Sho a calming smile but even professionals failed sometimes. The young man leaned a bit forward, wiping away Sho's tears who looked at the other miserably.

“I know, Sho, I know,” Nino said in a low voice, “So you remember everything now? You seemed to have a long nightmare. Must have been tough for you.”

Nodding, Sho let fall more tears from his eyelashes, let out more sobs, let his body start to tremble. Nino came closer, finally pulling Sho into his arms for a comforting hug.

“It will be alright, Sho,” he whispered into the others' ear.

Sho lifted his hands and put his arms around Nino, pulling him closer and burying his fingers in the fabric of Nino's white coat.

“Don't worry,” Nino tried to encourage his patient, “I'll protect you with all my might.”

“What happened to Aiba? Is he still alive?” Sho finally asked as tears started to dry. He almost couldn't bring up the courage to ask but he had to know.

Nino looked at him with questioning eyes, “Aiba? Who is that?”

And as Sho let his look slowly wander from Nino to a strange looking shadow standing behind him near the cell's door, Sho fell silent and didn't dare saying more. 

 

THE END


End file.
